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Friday, July 29, 2016

The Syria Challenge

In Syria the challenge facing us is
about bringing a terrible conflict to an end and containing the humanitarian
disaster that it engendered. It’s not about identifying the moderates, or sifting
moderates and extremists. After 5 years of fighting and intervention from a
myriad international and regional power, armed with conflicting agendas and no
desire to compromise, there are no moderates to be found on the battlefield.
There are, however, millions of innocent civilians that need protection, and
tens of thousands of prodemocracy activists who cannot lift their heads
because, at this stage, they are being targeted by all: IS, Al-Nusra, Islamist
rebels, and, most assuredly, the original extremist/terrorist group, and still
the biggest of them all: the Assad regime and its loyalist sectarian and
mercenary militias funded by Iran and backed by Russia’s airpower.

The idea of focusing on
destroying IS rather than ending the conflict is ludicrous magical thinking. As
long as the conflict rages on in Syria (and Iraq), and as long as killers like
Bashar al-Assad are allowed to act with impunity, the battlefields will
continue to attract and produce extremists who will continue to pose a serious
security threat to the world.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-American author and pro-democracy activist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.

The Delirica

The Delirica is a companion blog to the Daily Digest of Global Delirium meant to highlight certain DDGD items by publishing them as separate posts. Also, the Delirica republishes articles by Ammar that appeared on other sites since 2016. Older articles can be found on Ammar's internet archive: Ammar.World